My great love affair with the Spanish language didn’t begin until college. Unlike most American students of the language, I didn’t begin studying it until I was a doe-eyed freshman over 1,000 miles from home. Let me explain.
I started learning Latin—yes, Latin—in 7th grade. At the time, I attended a tiny Montessori school. When I say tiny, I mean tiny; the school never exceeded twenty-five students spread thinly across three grades. With so few students, we had only one language teacher, and she taught Latin. So, Latin I learned.
Actually, “learned” is an overstatement—“studied” would be more accurate. Though I had two years of Latin before I began high school, I retained shockingly little in the way of what you might call Latin knowledge. Honestly, Latin didn’t interest me. Memorizing vocabulary, committing case endings to memory, translating Caesar—I found it all rather dry. So, altogether unsurprisingly, I learned little.
Still, Latin became familiar to me, and when it came time to select what language I’d study in high school, I opted for a known quantity. Unfortunately, my relationship with Latin didn’t improve. Though I loved my Latin teacher and did well in his class, my success owed more to my memorization abilities than a true understanding of the language.
Nonetheless, I somehow picked up the notion that foreign language study could interest me. I would just need to study a language spoken widely today.
So, when it again came time to select what language I’d study—this time in college—I didn’t make the same mistake I had in high school: I decided on Spanish. I consider this one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Spanish enchanted me.
Join the A+ Newsletter!
We promise, no spam—just a monthly dose of educational insight, strategies, and exclusive tips straight to your inbox.
I still recall my amazement when, on the first day of Spanish class, my professor walked in the door speaking Spanish to us—and expected us to respond! (By contrast, I’d never heard any Latin teacher of mine utter a single word of the language except when reading it aloud from classical texts, and I had never done so, either.) I was as disoriented as I was enthralled.
That first year I studied hard. I spent hours every day memorizing new vocabulary and pouring over grammar rules, I began attending the weekly Spanish table, and I started to consume music (Soda Stereo), TV shows (Club de Cuervos), movies (También la lluvia), and books (Cien años de soledad) in Spanish. As a result, I learned a lot. I remember almost bursting with pride when I received an email from my Spanish professor at the end of that first year informing me that I’d scored 100% on the final exam.
Why did I love Spanish?
Above all, I loved it—and continue to love it—because it unlocks a vibrant world that shines more brilliantly when appreciated on its own terms, not in translation. For example, whenever I watch Spanish movies and TV shows with English subtitles, I routinely notice that, while those subtitles usually convey the gist of what the characters are saying, they rarely capture the subtleties of their dialogue. Being a lover of language and word play, I shudder at the thought of losing those precious nuances.
Additionally, learning Spanish unlocks bountiful opportunities for human connection—half a billion of them, in fact. (Did you know Spanish is the second most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese?) I consider myself immensely fortunate to have been able to connect with people with whom I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to communicate, whether in Waukegan, Illinois or Buenos Aires, Argentina. There’s another thing—speaking Spanish unlocks not only new people but also the places they inhabit. Of course, the same can be said of any language, but in the case of Spanish I feel it’s especially true. People speak Spanish all over the U.S., Central and South America, and in Europe. Besides English, it’s hard to come up with another language that opens so many geographic frontiers.
I continued studying Spanish throughout college, eventually making it one of my two majors. Thanks to my Spanish knowledge, I was able to study abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina for a semester during my junior year, and during my senior year I received a Fulbright award to teach English in Santa Rosa, Argentina for eight months.
Today, I keep up my Spanish by watching Argentinean TV shows and occasionally attending language exchange events in Chicago, where I live. Currently, I am studying to become a high school English teacher, and I hope that my Spanish fluency will enable me to work with Spanish-speaking ESL students—and communicate with their parents—in the future.